


i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

by rum4life



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Canon-typical swearing, F/M, Fluff, HBO War - Freeform, M/M, Rare Pairing, mentions of domestic violence, messing about with timelines, soulmate!AU, very super family-friendly mentions of sexual encounters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:41:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6384325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rum4life/pseuds/rum4life
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim Bryan grows up with a stranger's handwriting on his skin. It takes him a little time to figure out why. (Soulmate!AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spatzi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatzi/gifts).



> Title from "i carry your heart with me" by my love, e.e. cummings.
> 
> This is my self-indulgent love letter to Doc Bryan and the beautiful, talented man who portrayed him.
> 
> Tumblr AU prompt: "Soulmate AU where when you write something on your skin, it will show up on your soulmate's skin as well.

In their small kitchen bright with the afternoon sun, Mother crouches down on eye level with him. Her face is scary, scarier than the time he'd held Oreo by her hind-legs and gotten scratched up all over.

"Bobby," she says, "What did I say about drawing on things that aren't paper?"

Mother's voice is just as scary as her face: it makes him feel weird and sad, the beginnings of a sob bubbling in his throat. His eyes hurt and he scrunches them up, trying not to cry. He doesn't like it when she is angry with him. It doesn't happen a lot.

"I didn't do anything, Mother," he says. 

"Don't lie to me, Bobby," says Mother sternly. "You are _six_. You're old enough to know better."

"I _didn't!_ " Bobby shouts at her. 

She grabs him by the shoulders and marches him into the bathroom. He feels like a toy soldier. 

Mother makes him look in the mirror, pulling him onto the bright red plastic stool she'd brought home last year, just for him. Bobby sees himself, red in the face from trying not to cry. 

His face is covered in blue and red marker, messy swirls and streaks. 

"Where did you get the markers?" asks Mother angrily. 

Bobby tells her he didn't do it. "I _didn't!_ " he says again, louder, to make her _listen_. 

Mother doesn't listen, just smacks him on the side of the head. She takes a rag and dips it in water, squirts out pink hand soap, and scrubs his face with harsh strokes that make the tears in his eyes fall onto her hand, tells him he's very naughty.

The marker doesn't come off for three days. Bobby isn't allowed to watch his cartoons in the morning for a week. 

It isn't _fair_.

**

"Goddammit, Rob, you little pansy shit. You think I'm gonna take your faggot ass to the fair with that shit on your face?" 

" _Robert._ Please don't talk to him like-"

"Shut the fuck up, bitch. Wash that shit off his face. I'm not going out there with him looking like that."

Rob is 9 years old and he's been looking forward to the fair for _weeks_. All his friends from school are going. Jim told him yesterday that there was gonna be a petting zoo. There might even be _lizards._

Rob touches his cheek. He woke up this morning to the smell of pancakes and a flower, drawn carefully with pink marker, staring back at him from the mirror. He secretly likes it. When he snuck into the dining room, Dad- eyes heavy with sleep and stinking like old whiskey- took one look at him and started yelling. 

The vein on Dad's forehead is throbbing. Rob tries not to look at it.

The flower won't wash off. Mother quietly pastes a bandaid over it. Rob watches in the mirror as pink swirls disappear underneath brown tape and feels unfamiliar disappointment.

They go to the fair. There are no lizards, and Dad doesn't go on any of the rides with him.

**

Rob hates it when Dad's home on weekends, he _hates_ it. At least on school days Rob can hide in his room and do his homework, pretend he can't hear Dad stumble in through the door, shouting at Mother. 

Sometimes Rob hides under his covers and listen to Mother quietly sob in the room next door, tries not to know what Dad's yelling and the thumps from downstairs mean. 

Dad is a strange, unfamiliar presence in their home. He likes to go to a bar nearby at night, Rob knows. Carl Stetson says he drinks with his daddy and uncle. Carl doesn't talk about his own daddy much, but one day Carl comes to school with an eye so bruised and puffy he can't open it. 

Rob touches the sore bruise right over his own belly button and thinks he understands. 

When Rob gets home, he tells Mother that from now on he wants everyone to call him by his middle name. Mother looks into his eyes for a long minute that feels like an hour, and then quietly says, "Okay, Tim."

**

"Mr. Bryan, what is that on your arm?"

Tim blinks up at Mr. Morrison, pencil poised over his English test. "What?" he asks, confused.

Mr. Morrison grabs his wrist, wrenches it up to look at it. Next to him, Emma Jones giggles, golden curls falling forward over her ducked head. Tim feels himself blush.

"I'd better not be catching you cheating, son."

"I'm not, sir," Tim says desperately. He's the top of his class, he doesn't need to fucking _cheat_. 

Around his seat, a few more of his classmates look over and begin to titter, whisper. Tim fucking _hates_ high school.

Mr. Morrison drops his hand and stalks away. Tim looks down, twisting his arm to see the smudge of black. It's an algebraic formula, he sees immediately; something he learned _last year._

Tim has no recollection of ever writing it. He rubs at it. It doesn't even smear.

**

He's learned to ignore when marks appear on random body parts. Words form on Tim's wrist in neat, slanted handwriting: references to literature, more formulas, shopping lists. " ** _Starbucks six bring Hamlet_** ". 

A smiley face on a knee; inexplicably, an impressively accurate sketch of Hobbes on his left thigh. "Love" and "Hate" over the knuckles of his hands. (Tim hated that one. It took a week to disappear.)

One day Coach yells at Tim for the lines of Shakespeare on his arm, calls him a gay hippie faggot. 

Tim yells back that he didn't write it; Coach sneers and says something derogatory about not caring about what he and his boyfriend do in their spare time, just get it the fuck off his arm. 

Tim isn't surprised when the words fail to disappear under the soap suds in the shower. After sixteen years, a hypothesis is beginning to form in his mind. 

**

Mother doesn't quite flinch when Tim sits with her in their quiet, warm kitchen and fleshes out his theory, but it's a close thing. 

"I thought I was going fucking crazy," he confesses. His right leg jiggles uncontrollably with nerves. 

"You're not," Mother says quietly. She looks deep in thought. She's started to gray at the temples; Tim thinks there are more wrinkles on her forehead than he remembers seeing before. He hasn't sat with her like this in years.

It runs in the family, Mother tells him. Then, she utters a word he's never heard her say before: _soulmate_.

"That's," Tim begins. Stops. Can't quite gather his thoughts- they're racing through his mind with such speed that he grows dizzy.

Mother waits patiently.

"So somewhere out there, there's a person writing this stuff on their body," Tim says, cautious, "And because they're...my soulmate? It shows up on mine as well?"

Mother nods.

"If it runs in the family... did that happen with you and Dad?"

Tim feels a pang when Mother blanches at the question, color draining from her face. She looks small, sitting in the creaky dining room chair, hands cupped around her cup of coffee. Small and sad. 

"No," she replies. "It didn't."

"Oh," Tim says. He doesn't know what else to say.

Mother adds, in afterthought: "Your Grandmother and your Grandfather did." The lines of her mouth turn up wistfully. "When he fought in Germany, that was how they communicated."

He hates to hear the sad tone of her voice. It doesn't matter, anyway, and he won't bring it up again.

When Tim moves to stand, Mother grasps him gently by the wrist and turns it to see the handwriting on it. Today it's just a date: 424/423 BCE. 

"Plato," she says softly. Tim nods; he'd looked it up in the library. 

"Try writing something," Mother suggests.

"What if..." Tim swallows. He doesn't like writing on his own skin, which means his soulmate may not know of his existence. Their strange link. "What if I don't want them to know?"

The look Mother sends him is disbelieving, a little amused. "You will," she says simply. "Give it time."

**

Tim stays in the library till he's told they're closing. He pulls every book about soulmates off the shelves, barricading himself in a wall of words. 

His blood link is rare, Tim finds, but there are many kinds of links, the most common being: flashes of a stranger's face in a mirror, bursting unwillingly into song in unison with a soulmate thousands of miles away, and seeing the world in black and white until the first meeting. 

His link feels intimate, private and unobtrusive, and he nurses a warm feeling in the wake of that realization. Tim strokes a finger over the neat lines on the back of his hand- " _ **P. neruda xvii**_ "- as he turns page after page, words blurring together. 

**

The first and last time Tim punches his father, Robert Sr. is so drunk he sways in place. His forehead vein throbs in time with his insults; Robert calls Tim a disgrace, a disappointment, a fucking nerd, a pathetic weakling. He smells rancid, like the inside of a days-old empty whiskey bottle. 

Mother tries to stop his tirade; Robert throws her to the side so forcefully she cracks her head on the wall and collapses. 

Fury rushes through Tim like a storm, and he throws a punch with 16 years of hurt and fear behind it. The _crack_ of Robert's nose breaking under his fist is music to his ears.

Robert falls directly onto their coffee table, and it shatters beneath his unconscious body. Tim's knuckles throb with pain, and the fury still hasn't left him, but he feels satisfied. When the police knock on the door, the smile he shows them is genuine.

Robert doesn't yell at him again. 

**

One day, the words **_Call 911_** appear on his hand, shaky and barely legible.

Tim stares at the unfamiliar handwriting, _not theirs_ , and feels himself go into something like shock. He pukes twice in the bathroom and sits on the floor, cradling porcelain, eyes fixed on the ink. It disappears after two hours.

After, Tim lies sleepless in his bed, wondering. He should've _done something_ , he thinks miserably. His pillow is too hot against his cheek and Tim throws it at the wall, feeling helpless and alone and scared for the first time in too long.

Two weeks later, he's in homeroom. Carl is sitting next to him like he has since grade school, withdrawn and quiet, his hair falling into his eyes. They're sharing a comfortable silence when Tim glances down at his arm and then freezes as he takes in a phone number, written in that neat, feminine slant; blue pen, Maryland area code. 

A single sob of relief escapes Tim, and he isn't even fucking embarrassed by it.

**

The first time Tim kisses a girl, he's 17, and the afternoon sun slates through the bleachers he's under, warming his neck. 

Georgiana is 16, skin soft and breath fluttery, pliant in his arms. Tim can see every one of her dark eyelashes; they lie against the flushed skin of her cheek, and Tim swallows her moan as his fingers creep under her shirt. 

It's... _okay_ , Tim thinks. _Kinda wet._ She smells good, though, and he likes the way her curves press against his body. 

She wants to go steady. Tim thinks, maybe I can do that.

(Maybe they can work on kissing till it becomes the amazing thing his friends are always talking about.)

Georgiana doesn't let Tim touch her under her bra. For some reason, he feels something close to relief.

**

Mother cries when she drops him and his things off at his new dorm. Tim meets his roommate with Mother wiping tears with a handkerchief in the corner. The roommate looks embarrassed, but that's probably because his own mother is in the other corner, doing the same. 

His roommate's name is Josh. Josh's hair is dark and his eyes are a mischievous brown. He smirks at Tim and Tim hears blood rush in his ears, because something about Josh stuns Tim into staring way too long.

"I love you," Tim tells Mother, when Josh and his weeping parents leave. "If he hurts you, call me. I'll drop everything."

"It's not your job to protect me, baby," Mother says into his chest. 

Tim has grown tall enough that his chin can rest on top of her head. Usually, she hates it. Today, her body fits right into the lines of his own, and Tim holds her tight until her sobs subside.

**

The first time Tim kisses a boy, he's 18, it's 2 am, and he's pretty fucking wasted.

"Shit," says Josh, and arches beneath Tim's body where they've collapsed onto Josh's bed. Josh's skin feels sticky with sweat and his mouth tastes like tequila and pretzels, and Tim's cock is so hard he sees stars when he presses down into the mattress. Josh makes little noises like he's dying when Tim bites at his lip, and Tim fumbles with Josh's zipper because he's nervous and this is _Josh_ and Josh's dark brown eyes are regarding him with warmth and trust and something like awe. 

Kissing Josh is everything kissing Georgiana and Mary Beth and Joanna and Cindy hadn't been. Josh's mouth is hot around his tongue, and Josh moans Tim's name into Tim's mouth like a fucking porn star, and Tim might just come in his pants like a sixteen year old virgin, it's so goddamn amazing.

Tim catches a glimpse of the neat ink on his own wrist and thinks, _fuck_ , because how will this end if he meets his soulmate and has to tell her he's probably, _definitely_ , gay?

Then Josh sticks his hand roughly into Tim's boxers and fists his cock, and Tim drops his head with a groan and stops thinking for a good long while. 

**

Josh has impossibly messy fucking handwriting, and it hurts Tim's head just to look at it. He tries to stop himself from comparing it to neatly scribbled acronyms on his palm, but he ends up doing it anyway. 

**

One day, Josh throws his books onto Tim's lap and upsets his ramen noodles all over him and the floor.

"What the _fuck_ ," Tim yells, suddenly furious for no reason. He stands with balled fists, glaring hard at Josh. Ramen soup drips down his leg, cooling against his skin.

Josh flinches; it's enough to make Tim deflate, anger leaving him abruptly. 

" _Dude_ ," Josh says, and he sounds hurt. He won't meet Tim's eyes. "I'm sorry, okay? Fuck, homes. I'll clean up - fuck, I'll buy you another pack if it's so fucking important to you!"

"No," Tim says quickly, grabbing Josh and pulling him in, whispering _Sorry, I'm sorry,_ into his dark hair. 

He thinks of Robert Sr. throwing a vase at him when he was eleven because he'd accidentally knocked over a beer can. The impact had knocked his front tooth out. 

Tim feels sick. 

"I'm thinking of joining the Marines," Josh murmurs into his neck. 

**

Josh signs up for the Corps at the end of their freshman year. When Josh calls his parents to tell them the news, Tim can hear their tinny voices, confused and angry: _You're going to be a lawyer, son, and that's final._

Josh hangs up without saying goodbye. He grabs the bottle of vodka hidden in a box under his bed and gets steady, calculated drunk. 

Tim pretends not to watch him from the corner of his eye and thinks about options.

**

At the end of their senior year, Tim and his new roommate watch news footage of their generation's first real war, unfolding on their tiny TV.

Five emails received within the span of 10 minutes, all from Josh, sit in his inbox; they say nothing about Afghanistan. Still, Tim switches on his computer, opens Yahoo!, and types: Marine Corps Doctor. 

The scribbled note fading on his arm reads, **_Semper Fi_**.

It's late September, 2001.

**

When Tim completes basic training at Fort Sam Houston, he only has one email from Josh waiting for him, and it's short, few details. It's signed, _Ray_. Nothing more. Tim stretches the kinks in his neck and decides not to reply.

His soulmate's handwriting hasn't appeared in weeks. Tim looks at the blank skin of his wrist and aches a little, deep in his chest. 

**

No one calls him Tim, these days, except Mother over the phone on Thursday nights. He is either "Bryan" or "Corpsman" or "Doc". He's okay with that. The name is a painful reminder of his namesake, but it's been more than three years since he's seen that son of a bitch. He's reinventing the name as his own, now.

 _Bobby_ cried when Daddy yelled. _Rob_ locked his door when Dad hit Mother. _Tim_ got angry too fast and broke Robert's nose and cried silently at the thought of Mother being hurt. 

_Tim_ kissed his college roommate dirty and rough and sucked his cock with nails biting into the hard flesh of his thighs. _Tim_ hairline-fractured his wrist punching the wall when the Twin Towers burnt to the ground. _Tim_ touched the skin of his arm every night before falling asleep, traced the fading ink there, and dreamt about writing something back.

 _Doc Bryan_ is a tough, hard professional, and he's being deployed to Afghanistan with a company of Marines in less than a week. 

Bryan doesn't feel. He _does._

**

Afghanistan is cold. It's cold, it's unwelcoming, and it feels just like Bryan thinks a war zone should. The Marines in his platoon act like it's Christmas come early, but when December rolls around they're aching with cold and hunger and exhaustion, with grit on their faces an inch thick from not showering properly for a month. Christmas is the furthest thing from anyone's mind.

The day before Christmas, Bryan sees blood spilt in action for the first time in this freezing desert.

Strangely, all Bryan can think of, over the screams of the wounded Marine and the empty void where his emotions should be, is shaky black letters spelling out **_Call 911_**. 

_Look at me now,_ Bryan thinks. _If something goes wrong ever again, I can help you._

Bryan's hands move instinctively, the repetition of training kicking in, but the blood running over his hands feels icy cold instead of hot like it should. 

Bryan is afraid his voice will shake when the Marine asks him if he's gonna die. "Just breathe, man," Bryan replies. "This is nothing. You're gonna be fine." 

His voice comes out calm and clear.

**

Bryan thinks about Josh, sometimes. He wonders if he's out here somewhere, too, too-loud laugh and inappropriate jokes fading out into the freezing wind. 

He looks sharply at every slim, bright eyed brunette Marine he passes. There are too many to count. 

None of them are Josh.

**

The first time he sees a man die, it's from inside a C-130: enemy soldiers driving a Toyota pick up truck. 

The truck in the distance below explodes on impact from a Cobra missile and, amidst the raining flames of debris and ash, he thinks he can spot the charred remains within. 

Bryan looks to his right. Sat beside him in the chopper are three nervous-looking women and one man- Hospitalmen like him, only thirty-six hours fresh off US soil. The self-conscious way their hands flutter to their pistols shows it. 

Bryan's been ordered to accompany them and get them adjusted as they set up their operating room in Rhino, hundreds of miles from Kandahar, which makes Bryan nothing better than a fucking babysitter. He wants to go out to where the action is, but his minimal training won't allow him to accompany any Special Forces. He feels cheated. 

When they land, the four doctors run off up a guard tower to where they're told two senior officers are. Want to make official introductions or some bullshit. Bryan leans against the cool metal of the guard tower and observes the steady ebb and flow of chattering, laughing Marines around him. 

Bryan looks to his left at the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs, and catches the weary eye of an officer. The officer's large, solemn green eyes gleam from beneath his Kevlar, above a straight nose and an expressive mouth. He nods at Bryan, once, before walking away.

Bryan feel like he's run 10 miles, his heart is pounding so fast. He suddenly needs to know who that officer was. 

With the rush of blood in his ears, Bryan grabs the nearest Marine walking past. His luck isn't great: it happens to be the scary motherfucker with the hard eyes whose grave everyone seemed to gravitate to at night, back at the hangar in Kandahar, for hot coffee and debates about race and the morality of war. Sergeant Espera. 

Bryan's never spoken to him, but he puts aside his reservations because the officer has already disappeared from sight and Bryan is running out of time.

"Do you know who that officer was, standing here a few seconds ago?" Bryan asks him quickly, and lets go of Espera's arm before the other man can react negatively to it. 

"Him?" says Espera, and glances towards the doorway. "That was Lieutenant Fick, dog. You fucking with me? How the fuck you not know that already?" 

Fick. The name's familiar. It's usually accompanied by tones of respect from junior and senior grunts alike. First Battalion, Bravo Company. Bryan's never worked under him, but good officers are spread so few and far between that news travels fast. 

It's a good sign, but it doesn't explain the way Bryan's entire body feels like it's on fire.

Espera is eyeing him up and down. "You ain't with Bravo, huh, Doc?"

"Just flew in," Bryan replies, then thinks, _fuck it_ , and stretches out a hand. "Bryan."

"Espera," Sergeant Espera replies, and grasps his hand. "Hey, I know you from somewhere?"

Bryan doubts he'll remember, but: "I was working out of Pasni with Charlie Company."

Espera grins wide. It's a disarming sight, and changes Espera's face to a warmer, friendlier one for a brief moment. "I thought I'd fuckin' seen you before. Doc Bryan, yeah, yeah. I've heard good things about you, dog. Keep up the good work. You staying?"

Bryan shrugs. He doesn't know. "For now, I guess I am."

"Well, I'm outta here by tonight, but I'll see ya around," says Espera, and claps him on the shoulder. 

Bryan gives up on finding Lieutenant Fick, even when his face is the last thing burned on his eyelids when he closes them to sleep.

He's in Afghanistan for three more months, and the Philippines for another two, but he doesn't see him again. 

**

When he gets back home, tired and broken and twice as bitter as before he'd left, Bryan gives himself a week before he applies to C school. He shuts out his former life and studies as hard as he can, runs 10 miles every morning, and calls Mother on Thursday nights. He graduates with flying colors. 

Mother cries over the phone when he tells her. She says: _I'm so proud of you._ And: _I moved in with your aunt and uncle._

Bryan tells her he'll see her soon, and he knows Mother can hear the tears of relief in his voice. She doesn't comment on them.

On the night of his graduation, Bryan sits in the corner of a nearby bar while his companions flirt with women with fake hair and faker tits. A blond man with icy looks and a hard exterior catches his eye from the counter; Bryan looks away first.

The skin of his arm itches and he's suddenly excited; he looks down, and in the dim light of the bar, Bryan reads: **_Celer, Silens, Mortalis_.**

He doesn't know how to interpret his soulmate scribbling the notoriously all-male Force Reconnaissance's motto on their arm. He takes it as a sign anyway. 

When he's recommended for Special Amphibious Reconnaissance, Bryan accepts without a second thought. 

**

Bryan finds himself learning to do things he'd never even had the imagination to dream of, before.

On rare occasions, he'll complete a perfect recon training mission with his new platoon and feel superhuman. Most of the time, his training and experience merely highlight the unforgivable stupidity of his superiors. 

Basic training is supposed to tear you down as a man and rebuild you into a Marine- that is, a perfect obedient killing machine. Bryan had let basic tear him down, but he alone had built himself back up, brick by brick by independent brick, and he is no obedient grunt. He doesn't bow down and obsequiously lick the boots of the officers, nor does he let the stupendous amount of diarrhetic shit rolling downhill submerge him completely. 

Some officers respect him for it. Some are so butthurt that they've been out for his blood since Day 1. 

Bryan's fine with making enemies. He's on the alert every day, 100% watch, just him, no one to watch his six, even now- on home soil. Where they're supposed to be able to relax, some. No one jumps out of a pickup truck and sprays him with bullets, but that's because now Bryan is fighting an entirely different kind of war.

Maybe _Tim_ would have been crushed by the startling feeling of loneliness at the knowledge. Bryan couldn't give a shit. Bryan may even prefer it. 

**

He still checks his body, most days. It becomes routine to strip and stand in front of the full length mirror in the gym showers. For some reason, now that's he's stateside again, ink appears on hidden body parts as well his left hand and forearm. Sometimes the handwriting is not the familiar slant but rougher, more masculine. Those words usually appear on a hip, or across Bryan's belly. 

It makes Bryan angrier than anything has in years, because it's a threat without a face. 

The third time it happens, it's over his ribs, spiky and rough: 

**_On the shore_**  
**_of the wide world I stand alone, and think_**  
_**Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink.**_

Bryan stares stupidly in the mirror for a moment. Then he completely fucking snaps. 

Heads turn in surprise as he stalks, stark naked, to his locker and empties the entire fucking thing out over the smeared brown footprints on the filthy floor. He has to rifle through two more lockers before he finds what he's looking for. 

Bryan grips the permanent marker in his hand, thinks for a second, then smirks. Scribbles, stops. Admires. 

**_Keats? I expected better._ **

**

He gives it two days before he scrubs the message off his arm. The poetry on his ribs disappeared exactly an hour after he'd first put pen to skin. Nothing else appears in the interim. 

Bryan likes to think it's a startled silence. He has the upper hand, now. 

He should've done this _years_ ago.

**

The day Bryan receives a reply is the same day they officially meet their new platoon commander. 

It's also the day he meets Sergeant Colbert's favorite RTO.

He doesn't hear it straight from Colbert, because Colbert rarely speaks to him and there's little Bryan needs to seek him out for to initiate any conversation. It's Rudy, jogging alongside him in the early morning fog without breaking a sweat, that mentions it.

"How are you today, brother?" Rudy says. 

Bryan shrugs, and their synchronized feet eat another half a klick of white sandy beach before he replies, "Good as I'll ever get, I guess."

Rudy smiles, teeth blindingly perfect. He says, "You'll be meeting our lead RTO today. I'm sure Brad mentioned it."

Bryan snorts. "He did nothing of the sort."

It makes Rudy laugh. "Brother, that surprises me," he says. "It's all he's been able to talk about for days. He's been pulling strings to get Ray back on his team ever since Afghanistan. Maybe you've met him. Corporal Ray Person."

Bryan racks his brain for a Ray Person. It doesn't click until the words "I don't think-" are half out of his mouth, and then he feels like he's been strung up by his ankles and waterboarded and he needs to _stop running_. 

Bryan bends at the waist, hands on knees, trying to steady his sudden vertigo. Rudy immediately offers him water and rubs his back in soothing circles, "Breathe, Doc, that's it, just breathe." 

Bryan waves him off; his hand moves through air that suddenly feels like soup. "Just a cramp," he says. 

Rudy buys it, and when they start up again Bryan notices his pace has slowed. Bryan is still struggling to breathe properly by the time they circle round back to Margarita.

**

He thinks he's prepared himself adequately for seeing Josh for the first time since he'd watched him drive off campus. Bryan goes over endless variables in his mind, plans to project a cool and calm exterior. 

Things have changed. He is no longer Tim, and Josh is no longer the Josh he'd been as a civilian. Doc Bryan is meeting Corporal Ray Person for the first time. 

**

The first time Bryan meets Ray, he's walking out of the shittiest war briefing he's ever had the misfortune to attend. He's listening to Espera, walking beside him, pick the division chief of staff's baffling attempt at a moto speech apart to bloody pieces. 

Bryan isn't looking where he's going, and so he inevitably runs straight into a small, hard body. 

The collision knocks the wind straight out of him, and the other Marine to the ground. Bryan feels a rush of annoyance and prepares a good sampling of choice swear words, but the Marine beats him to it, scrambling to his feet.

"Watch where the fuck you're going, yo!" the small, wiry man snaps. "You can't just wander around like this is fucking Coachella, asshole! You-"

He abruptly stops talking. 

His eyes grow comically wide, mouth still forming a forgotten word. Bryan stares back and forgets every single thing he'd planned to say.

"Oh," says Ray Person stupidly.

Espera lightly punches Ray in the arm. "Hey, white boy, watch your mouth. That's our new Doc you're trash-talking," Espera says, amused. "Keep going and maybe he'll _accidentally_ give you the wrong medicine in the field, when you fuck up and blow your foot off on a mine or some shit."

"Our new," says Ray. 

"You managed to shut him up, Doc," Espera stage-whispers, leaning in conspiratorially. "You don't know Corporal Person yet, but that right there, dog, that's a fucking miracle of God. Mad respect."

"You," says Ray. His gaze travels over Bryan's face lightening-fast. He sounds like his brain has short-circuited. 

Bryan struggles to remember how to speak English properly before Ray can say anything incriminating. "I hear you're Colbert's newly-appointed RTO, Corporal Person," Bryan says, and stretches out a hand. "Navy Corpsman Tim Bryan."

Ray looks down at his hand like it's an alien artifact. "Tim," Ray says slowly. 

Espera whistles through his teeth and laughs gleefully. "Shit, dog, you did _not_ just say that."

"No one calls me Tim, motherfucker," Bryan snaps. It's suddenly very easy to sound angry and distant. "That's Doc Bryan, to you."

Emotion flashes in Ray's eyes, and finally he seems to unfreeze. He rocks back on his heels lazily. "Doc," Ray says coldly, then turns to Espera. "You see the Iceman anywhere, homes?"

"He's still in there with the LT," Espera says.

Ray escapes without another look at Bryan. 

"What the hell was that shit?" Espera asks curiously. "You two know each other or something?"

"Or something," Bryan grunts. Then thinks, _fuck it_ , and adds: "We were roommates, freshman year."

"Shit, dog," Espera laughs. "I would've thought you two were mortal enemies!"

Bryan feels both relief and trepidation as they walk away from the chapel. Maybe it'll be easier if Ray hates him. 

**

It's a one-two punch to the stomach when, mere minutes after his encounter with Ray, Bryan is introduced to their new platoon commander and looks straight into the intelligent green eyes of Lieutenant Nate Fick. 

Fick smiles brightly, clicks his pen against his palm before pocketing it, and extends a hand.

"Doc, it's a pleasure to meet you," Fick says pleasantly. "I think I remember hearing about you in Afghanistan. First Battalion, Charlie Company, right?"

"Sir," replies Bryan with a smile of his own. His heartbeat is so loud in his ears he's surprised no one else seems to hear it. "It's an honor." 

Taking Fick's hand feels like touching a live wire with a bare, wet palm: Bryan feels the shock through his entire body. It feels familiar, somehow, this tingly rush- he can't place it.

Fick stutters on his next words. "I- don't be, don't be ridiculous, Doc. The feeling is mutual."

Bryan lets his hand go before the handshake is over. He resists the urge to wipe his hand on his uniform. Fick looks shaken. It's odd, and Bryan wonders for a moment if Fick felt it too. He brushes the thought away immediately.

Gunny Wynn, standing next to Fick, looks between them, curious. 

**

That night, Bryan feels a tingle of sensation. He looks down at his arm, and there, neat and slanted, is one word. 

_**How?**_

It's a recent development, the physical feeling on his skin accompanying words. The first time was in the bar, the night Bryan graduated. A slight itch. This is new, a wash of sensation like a feather brushing over his skin. He traces the word with a finger, then pulls out a marker, writing underneath:

_**Do you have all night?** _

He strips and jumps in the shower, careful not to smudge the words. There's a dot of what could be dirt or ink from his pen on his left palm, possibly left when he'd been taking notes during the briefing. Bryan rubs at it, but without irritation. He looks down at his arm every other minute. Waiting for a reply. 

The dot won't come off. He leaves it.

No reply comes. He sleeps. Then he wakes up at 0530, shaves, brushes his teeth, and washes his message off in the shower after his morning run.

**

Bryan breaks the cold silence between himself and Ray a week into their stay at Matilda. 

Ray's eyes slide over him like he's not there when Bryan enters the tent. Ray's alone, for once. Bryan walks over and stands over him, and Ray spends three entire minutes pretending he isn't there.

"I was an asshole," says Bryan finally.

"Yeah, no _shit,_ " Ray replies bitterly. He still won't look at Bryan.

Bryan sighs and sits beside Ray and the mountain of cannibalized radio equipment he's fiddling with. "Josh," he says tentatively.

Bright, furious eyes leap to his face. Ray lunges, and suddenly he has a handful of Bryan's t-shirt bunched in his fist, pulls Bryan in till their faces are inches apart.

"No one calls me Josh, motherfucker," Ray spits at him. "That's Corporal Person, to you."

Bryan closes his eyes so he won't have to see the look on Ray's face, hears his own words repeated back to him. 

"I was a fucking asshole," Bryan says, "And I'm asking you to fucking forgive me, all right?"

"For what?" Ray releases him. He picks up an antenna; it trembles in his grip. "For not answering my email five hundred fucking years ago? For not telling me you were, oh, I don't know, _joining the military_?"

Bryan opens his mouth to say, _yes_. Ray doesn't let him.

"Or are you sorry for something else, _Bryan_?" Ray snarls. "Are you wishing you hadn't experimented with me in college, _Bryan_? Wish you don't have to fucking look at me now and remember how I looked sucking your-"

This time, it's Bryan who lunges. He plants a hand firmly over Ray's mouth, and Ray's lips struggle against his palm. The struggle is brief; tension seeps from Ray's shoulders and he slumps in defeat.

Ray mouthes, _Why?_ against Bryan's palm, eyes still bright and accusatory.

"I've made mistakes," Bryan tells Ray. "But you, you- that was something I-"

Bryan pauses. He doesn't know how to phrase what's in his head. He's going to try anyway.

"It may have just been sex at first, but we don't know what would've happened if you hadn't left, Ray. Maybe... maybe we could've had _years_ ," Bryan says quietly. 

Ray's breath is hot and clammy against his skin. 

Bryan forces past the awkwardness he feels and goes on. "Maybe not, maybe we would've fought, gotten scared, who the fuck knows. But that's not what happened. And now, here we are."

Carefully, slowly, he releases his hand. Ray stays quiet, listening.

"I don't regret our past, but I also know pursuing anything here would be fucking suicide," Bryan says, "So I'd like it if we could be friends."

Ray considers him. Then he looks over Bryan's shoulder, a quick sweep of the tent, and then closes the short distance between them. 

Ray's lips are dry and chapped against Bryan's mouth, a hard press so startling he can't move. As quickly as he'd moved forward, Ray falls back. 

"That was my kiss of forgiveness, homes!" Ray says, and then he cracks a genuine, crooked smile. Bryan feels a rush of affection. "I've fuckin' missed you, Tim, you know that?"

"Yeah," Bryan says, feeling lightheaded with relief. "You too, motherfucker."

**

Iraq is everything and nothing like Afghanistan.

The bleak stretches of desert are the same, ancient artifacts from previous wars sticking up like metal icebergs in the fine sand. The heat is overwhelming in the same way as the cold chill of the Afghan mountains had been. He feels a strange sense of _deja vu_ deep in his gut. 

Here, unlike Afghanistan, blood runs white-hot over his hands like lava.

Here, _like_ Afghanistan, Bryan watches a superior fuck up, and then fuck up some more, encouraged by the petty little men around him. Here, Bryan watches a perfectly competent lieutenant crumple slowly under the pressure of their commander's never ending spew of bullshit. 

Here, unlike Afghanistan, Bryan doesn't feel alone. He has brothers, and he has words on his skin that tingle pleasantly under the long sleeves of his MOPP suit.

It's disconcerting, but not unwelcome.

**

_**How long have you known?** _

It's dark enough that the bombs going off in the distance look like some fucked equivalent of an _Aurora Borealis_. Bryan makes sure he's alone before uncapping his pen. It's difficult to see much, but he feels where the words are- skin slightly more sensitive in one small area- and writes underneath:

 _All my life._ Bryan caps the pen and hooks it carefully on his flak jacket.

He hears a sharp gasp to his six; he peeks out of his ranger grave to see Fick stumble and lean against the Humvee above Bryan's head, swearing. _Fuck._

Bryan jumps out, grabbing his med pack. "Sir?" he asks.

Fick shakes his head furiously. He's staring down at where his right hand is clutching his left forearm. Bryan notes the maps and papers scattered at his feet, like Fick dropped them to grab his own arm in pain.

"You sure, sir?" 

Bryan reaches for Fick's arm, but Fick pulls away, gasps, "I'm fine, Doc. Cramp."

Relieved, Bryan sets down his pack. Fick still isn't back to his normal composed mask of authority, but he's getting there fast. 

"Let me know if it happens again," Bryan says sharply. "Can't have our LT crapping out on us halfway into an invasion."

Fick laughs a little. "I'm _fine_ , Doc. Just got a little dizzy."

Bryan narrows his eyes. His bullshit meter pings. "Thought you said you cramped up, sir." 

Fick exhales. "It was a fluke, Doc. Can we forget it happened?" 

Fick lays a hand on the edge of Bryan's exposed wrist for a second, an unconscious movement.

A shock runs through Bryan, stronger than when they'd first met but just as strangely familiar. 

Fick is staring at him, frozen. Bryan stares back. Fick slowly removes his hand, then places it cautiously on Bryan's arm again. The same spot. Bryan's body fizzles with incredible energy, like he's ingested an entire bottle of Ray's Ripped Fuel. 

Fick looks as stunned as he feels. "Did you..." he breathes. 

"Yeah," says Bryan. They look down where Fick's fingers linger on his wrist, which begin to trail down to the back of his hand. Fick's fingers leave a trail of fire on Bryan's skin; a strange yearning sensation starts to creep up Bryan's throat. 

"Nate? CO on comms for you."

Fick snatches his hand back as Gunny Wynn approaches them. Bryan catches another glimpse of curiosity on Gunny's face. 

"I'll look at it again tomorrow," Bryan says to Fick, raising his voice a fraction. "If it cramps up again, you come to see me ASAP. I don't care if you're in the middle of being shot at."

Fick is confused for only a moment. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Doc," he replies under Gunny's watchful eye. 

Bryan watches them go. He thinks: _What the hell._

**

This is it. This is how Bryan's life as he knows it will end: in the middle of the hot wretched sprawling fucking Iraqi desert, sand in every crevice, stinking like old sweat and gunpowder and stale instant coffee crystals, with his hands around his CO's throat.

Bryan will commit cold-blooded murder in front of his entire fucking platoon and this time he will _enjoy_ it. Bryan is going to strangle Encino Man until his imbecilic sub-IQ Neanderthal brain explodes out in one red burst and seeps into the sand and he will be court-martialed or worse and held in a shitty bare cell until his eyes rot out and he forgets what the sun looks like and it will all be _worth it_ , just to hear Encino Man's dying breaths.

Fick steps in and saves him from his imagined fate. Fick tries to talk Encino Man down and fails. Bryan shakes with pure and unadulterated anger and the world fades into shades of red.

It's never been more clear that Fick is the glue that's tenuously holding this platoon together. Bryan watches him speak slowly and concisely to their fucking joke of a commanding officer, and feels something other than anger uncurl hot and deep inside his chest. 

Bryan stands down. The murder of his commanding officer has been temporarily postponed.

**

Colbert looks incredulous, his tanned, calloused hands gripping fiberglass like he wishes it were the neck of their CO. One more rush of anger and the hood of the Humvee may well snap beneath his palms.

"You knew of this?" Colbert barks, turning to Bryan accusatorially. He pins Bryan with glowering eyes, demands, "Is it true?"

Fury towards their CO still freshly simmers in Bryan's gut. Colbert's words merely stoke the flames; he is on fire again.

"I was fucking there," Bryan says shortly. "It's all true. No, fuck that-- it's _worse_."

Bryan tries to walk away from the conversation so he can stew about fucking Encino Man and whiny conniving fucking Casey motherfucking Kasem on his own, but his evasions prove unsuccessful: Colbert strides out from behind Team Two's Victor and dogs him all the way to Command HQ. 

Anger seems to bring out a more verbose side of Colbert. His frustrated hand gestures sweep through the sticky air as he talks: The LT is one of the only fucking competent officers in the whole goddamn battalion. _Yes, Colbert._ The LT is someone who miraculously escaped the mandatory officer-grade lobotomy, and yet he's being subjected to this epic retardation for it. _Yes, Colbert._ The LT--

Bryan has fucking heard enough. He abruptly changes direction, grabs Colbert, and pulls him over a berm.

Colbert stares at him, gaze sharp, waiting. Bryan sees every emotion he's currently feeling reflected in Colbert's eyes.

"Let Nate figure this shit out for himself," Bryan says quietly. "It's fucking bullshit, yeah, I know. But. I know you love him, but--"

(Colbert makes a small noise. Bryan ignores him)

"--complaining openly like this might just make things worse. If you want to help him, stow your shit."

Colbert's nod is so reluctant it's almost in slow-motion.

**

The Team Leaders try to approach Nate about it anyway. 

Bryan listens to their after-action rehashing, rolls his eyes when they bitch and moan about Nate's ingratitude. For all that they're some of the most skilled and dangerous men on the planet, they act remarkably like very small children.

Nate's eyes are deep-set with exhaustion. Bryan tries to convince him: _You should get some sleep. Just a few hours_. 

Nate's grimace answers: _I couldn't if I tried._

Bryan tries not to acknowledge that his heart breaks at the sight of Nate, so worn down from carrying the platoon on his shoulders. Bryan aches every time he catches sight of Nate's too-pale skin. He wants to help, they all do, but Nate's too goddamn self-sacrificial to let them. 

Bryan's head tells him he's just worried for their leader's health, worried about the possible repercussions. 

His heart tells him he's so, so fucked.

**

Bryan doesn't write personal questions, and he doesn't ask. His soulmate seems to be evading the subject of names and locations as well. 

From his years of observation, Bryan knows these details:

Judging by the handwriting, the probability that his soulmate is female is high. 

His soulmate used to be forgetful, always jotting notes for later. They graduated to strictly doodles and quotes as they (and Bryan) grew older. The doodles are artistic masterpieces; the quotes veer close to unforgivably moto.

Theirs tastes are eccentric, ranging from obscure poetry to ancient history to children's cartoons. A Counting Crows lyric will be erased and replaced by an excerpt of Sappho, or Pindar.

_(They are desperately romantic.)_

They are either familiar with the Corps or are already a part of it.

They caught on fairly quickly to Bryan's clues, didn't immediately dismiss the words suddenly appearing on their skin. They investigated and reached a solid conclusion. They are most likely intelligent and rational.

They still know next to nothing about Bryan.

**

**_when I write what do you feel_ **

_recently? tingly_

**_that's it?_ **

_yes. it's getting stronger. why_

_**when you write it feels like a burst of adrenaline. hard to breathe** _

_we're soulmates you know. that's why this is happening_

_**what the fuck** _

**

After the SNAFU outside Muwaffaqiyah, Nate slides into Bryan's ranger grave, looking even more worn down than usual.

It's almost tradition, now. Bryan lets Nate sit next to him in silence and keeps to himself, enjoys their close proximity. Nate looks off in the distance and looks pensive and worried. Sometimes, very rarely, he angles his body towards Bryan and closes his eyes for a brief moment of sleep. 

Each time, Bryan thinks about asking Nate to touch him again. 

(He wants to know _why_ , because if this is mere sexual attraction, he's never fucking felt anything like it in his life.)

Each time, Nate doesn't touch him, or speak. He's okay with that, too.

Right now, Nate's leaning his head against the loose walls of the grave and watching the wind play with the sand in the distance. Nate absentmindedly grips his left wrist; it's a gesture Bryan has seen before. He wonders if Nate finds it soothing. 

Right now, Bryan isn't satisfied with just sitting and not talking, because Pappy told them not to pet a burning dog and now he's gone, and fucking Ray nearly got his head blown off, and the most fucked up thing of all, _the most infuriating of all_ , is that Nate ran out into the fucking open and risked his fucking life for all of them.

Right now, Bryan is realizing that he is definitely not okay with that.

"You're an idiot," Bryan tells Nate. His voice comes out clipped and furious.

Nate turns startled eyes to him. " _Excuse_ me?" Nate says, and God, he sounds so tired.

"What do you think would happen to the platoon if you fucking died, Nate?" Bryan snaps. "What part of getting out in the middle of an ambush to play at fucking traffic cop seemed like a good idea to you?"

It's seconds too late when Bryan realizes he's unconsciously used his lieutenant's first name. In the early morning light, Nate's wide eyes are echoes of the pale blue sky. 

"Tim," Nate says quietly, "You know I had no choice."

Bryan is suddenly exhausted. His body is wrecked from too much adrenaline for too long. His mind is torn between anger and grief and confusion and he wants to make Nate understand. 

(Bryan wants to take Nate by the shoulders and shake him and yell at him and touch the darkness gathered under his eyes and worship his skin until the surrounding desert is blown away, inch by grainy inch. Bryan wants to kiss Nate's mouth and stroke down his neck, bite Nate's shoulder. He wants to lie next to Nate and tangle their legs together and sleep.)

Bryan says: "I know."

**

In hindsight, it was almost inevitable- this, their slow slide into companionship. 

Bryan lives with the blood of a thousand Marines on his hands- blood spilt, blood yet to be spilt. Nate shoulders the lives of those same Marines, with the weary acceptance of an officer who will always put his men's lives before his own. 

And when the sun sinks below the shimmering horizon, hazy with shamal winds, the doctor sits in silence by the officer and, in that silence, they shoulder the burden together.

**

When it happens, it goes like this. 

The sun blazes down on his victor from a viciously blue sky, and the whole platoon is singing "Drop It Like It's Hot" at the top of their lungs. Ray and Brad started singing it two klicks ago, the wind carried their voices to Team Two's vehicle, and thus it spread to the rest like a particularly stubborn STD.

"When the Hajis try to git atchu!" yells Holsey.

"Drop it like it's hot, drop it like it's hot," reply Stafford and Christenson at a shout, leaning happily out the back of their victor. 

Bryan snorts and looks down at his arm, taking advantage of his team's distraction. He inches his sleeve up to see the latest message tingling on his skin:

**_I wish I could talk to you in person. let me find you_ **

Bryan swallows, looks up to check his sector, then back down, unable to look away for long. 

This is it. Their exchanges have been growing more frequent by the day, at an exponential rate now that they've established their soulmate status. It was a fact that, beyond the disbelief evident in his soulmate's initial reply, had been accepted with surprising speed. Fire buzzes under the skin of his arm constantly, now. Usually he finds it pleasant. A reminder of what could be. What will be.

Right now it feels urgent; Bryan has a sudden wild impulse to jump off the vehicle and run, and run, and run, until he reaches the spot he somehow _knows_ his soulmate will be waiting for him. It's close, he's pretty sure now that it's close, which makes no fucking sense unless the person holding the other half of his soul- this presence that has been with him for what feels like his entire life- lives in fucking _Iraq_.

Or... or is someone deployed here. Like him. In fucking Iraq.

Bryan's heart jumps in his throat, then moves to thrum in his ears. The singing around him fades in and out and he keeps staring down at his arm, sector forgotten, vision blurring. 

Bryan knows. He _knows_. It's impossible, it's sudden, it's unexpected, but he instantly knows with his entire body and mind that they are here, in Iraq, under the same blazing sun, the same sand stinging their eyes. 

They're here, and they're close. 

Bryan reaches for a wet wipe, scrubs away his last message, and writes:

_I'm here. Come find me._

**

The first time Bryan meets his soulmate, he's choking down a cold, inedible mystery meat chunk MRE. His bandana sticks to his skin, soaked with sweat. It's been exactly two weeks and five days since his last shower.

Bryan's eyes are on Nate a few paces away, listening to Nate laugh for what feels like the first time in _decades_. Across from him, Ray has beeferoni all over his fucking face and his eyes are on Hasser, a look in his eyes that Bryan recognizes with a jolt from their college days- from when Ray used to look up at him in Bryan's bed, on Bryan's sheets, with that same crooked smile. 

Bryan watches Ray look at Walt, and Walt looking back and smiling for the first time since the roadblock, and realizes he's happy for him, for both of them. Even if the military will make it fucking difficult for them to have a happy ending. 

Then Bryan looks at Nate and realizes with a skip in his pulse that Nate is looking back. Walking towards him. 

Bryan closes his eyes and feels the heat under the skin of his arm, tries not to feel guilty about loving Nate when his soulmate is so close he can taste them on the air. 

Because. _Because._ This is what hits Bryan like a cresting tidal wave, MRE forgotten in his hand:

He wants Nate and he cares about Nate and he respects Nate, and most of all, he _loves._ Bryan is in love with Nathaniel Fick. 

It's a realization that, really, only a distraction as big as an actual war could have delayed. Still, it's hard to believe it's taken him this long.

"You know," says Nate thoughtfully, interrupting the frantic whirlpool of his thoughts. Nate has stopped in front of Bryan's sprawled-out legs, casting a shadow. "You're probably the only one left in this platoon that doesn't ratfuck their MREs. It's awe-inspiring."

Nate's eyes are still laughing. Bryan swallows, throat suddenly dry. Bryan aims for a normal voice, afraid the after effects of the second biggest epiphany of his life will somehow show. 

"I just imagine that every shitty, crusty chunk is a bite of chicken pot pie at Bubby's, sir," Bryan says. 

Success. His voice is totally no-I'm-not-in-love-with-you-sir normal. 

" _Bubby's,_ Tim?" Nate says incredulously. Nate folds himself into a satisfied pile next to Bryan, his shoulder almost-but-not touching Bryan's. 

"Bubby's," answers Bryan.

Nate shakes his head in amusement, bites down on a cracker smothered in peanut butter. "Of all the restaurants Stateside? Hell, the _world_? You choose _Bubby's_? The chain restaurant?"

Bryan shrugs. The movement brings his body that much closer to Nate's.

It's a really fucking stupid thing to notice, stupid how tempted Bryan is to lean over and just kiss the shit out of Nate's beautiful fucking mouth. He notices and is tempted and resists anyway.

"It reminds me of my mother," Bryan says. "She wasn't the greatest cook, but she tried. It wasn't all bad. Homey, you know."

Nate sighs. "Yeah. I know what you mean." Then: "Take me."

Bryan blinks. His vision whites for a second as a thousand possible interpretations of those two words fly through his mind at light speed. Then he realizes he's being an idiot.

"Take you to Bubby's?" Bryan asks, amused. He turns his head to see Nate's nod, the way Nate's eyes are shining at him.

"I'll buy," Nate clarifies with a grin. "Just take me to the place you always go when you want a taste of home." Nate waves his cracker in the air. "You know, if we get out of this whole thing in one piece."

Bryan pretends to think about it. "You have a deal," he says. Bryan can't help the smile that stretches his face, wide and happy. He can picture it now, sitting across from Nate with that annoying faux-New York decor around them. His chest warms. 

"Write that shit down, sir," Bryan adds. "Can't have you forgetting."

Nate rolls his eyes, then dramatically pats himself down. "For the first time since touchdown, I don't have a single piece of paper on me," he says. He sounds excited about it. Fucking officers and their paperwork.

Bryan sighs and unhooks his pen from his jacket. "Humans have been using skin to write on since the Fourth Dynasty, LT, you fucking child of the 21st century."

Nate hesitates for half a second. Then he takes the pen, holds up his left hand in a loose fist.

"You're secretly the biggest nerd in the platoon, admit it. And Ray was apparently on the _debate team_."

"Fuck you, sir."

Nate smiles, pen still hovering over the back of his hand. "Okay, how's this?" 

Nate writes, simply: Bubby's.

**

Bryan gets no warning whatsoever. Around them, laughter and chatter and playful insults mingle in the air as their platoon sprawls comfortably on the grass, soaking up the sun's rays. There's a whisper of a breeze, smooth and warm, raspy as it blows through the leaves of the palm trees.

They are sitting in the eye of this, he and Nate: guards down, open and comfortable. Therefore he is totally fucking unprepared for what comes next.

Nate writes, and the moment his pen touches skin Bryan's entire body burns white hot, from the back of his hand, then up, up, up, and out, energy seeping from every pore. 

Nate chokes out, " _Tim_ ," and his voice, his _voice_ , it breaks on Bryan's name in a way Bryan doesn't understand until he looks up into Nate's eyes. Nate looks like Bryan feels, disbelieving and fucking fucked up and _relieved_. 

Nate stares down at where Bryan's hand is white-knuckling the material of his own MOPP suit, neat lines of dark ink staining skin, like it would take an entire Iraqi army to pull his gaze away. 

The back of Bryan's hand reads: **_Bubby's._**

"You," chokes Nate.

Bryan breathes, " _You._ "

Ray shouts, "Doc, come look at my fucking feet, yo! I think I'm growing a mushroom!"

**

"Did you know?" 

They're alone. Well, not really, but they're only on twenty five percent watch, and Bryan dug his grave extra deep, so. As alone as they can get under the circumstances. 

"I really fucking didn't," Bryan replies dryly. 

Nate slides in next to him, like all those other times, only unlike all those other times there's an electricity in the grave that is new. 

"It didn't even seem like an option," Nate says, low, like a confession. He looks young like this, eyes wide and earnest- young like the fresh-faced lieutenant Bryan first saw in Afghanistan. "I'll admit, I... a part of me wanted it to be you."

Bryan can't help it, he reaches out, pulls Nate's sleeve down an inch, just to see. Bryan strokes a finger over his words, " _Come and find me,_ ", feels warmth spread through him.

Then Nate shudders, bites his lip. Looks up at Bryan with unmistakable desire, gasps like he's drowning under Bryan's touch, and. _And_.

Bryan feels arousal slam him, low in his gut, and he wraps his hand around Nate's wrist, pulls Nate in so that Nate's lying half over him.

"Wait," says Nate, but Bryan growls and kisses Nate's wrist anyway, tongue tracing the words stark black against pale skin.

Nate swears quietly and closes his eyes. Bryan can feel Nate trembling against his body, feels the energy pulsing between them. Bryan scrapes his teeth over the veiny underside of Nate's wrist and Nate gasps, "Fuck, _fuck,_ Tim." 

Nate twists his wrist so that his hand cups the side of Bryan's face and then kisses Bryan, hard.

It's almost too much, a desperate clash of lips and teeth. Bryan grabs Nate by the neck and slides his tongue into the heat of Nate's mouth, and _God_ , Nate tastes so fucking good, tongue curling against his like Nate's waited a lifetime to do it. Bryan deepens the kiss when Nate's nails bite into his skin, every slick slide of Nate's tongue sending sharp jolts of arousal to the pit of Bryan's stomach. Then he breaks off, mouthing down Nate's jaw and down his neck.

Nate tastes like sand and sour sweat but Bryan doesn't care, doesn't _fucking_ care, because the way Nate gasps wetly against his skin when Bryan gently bites down is going to kill him, and if this is the last thing he gets to do before he dies then at least he'll die happy.

" _Doc,_ ," Nate says, ragged, then firm: "Tim, we have to stop."

"Give me one good reason," Bryan mutters against his neck, nudging at Nate's jaw with his nose, breathing him in. 

"I'll give you twenty-two good reasons, if you'd like," Nate says wryly, breaking away. 

Bryan sighs, scrapes at the stubble on his chin, feels the distance Nate has put between their bodies so keenly that his hands shake. "So."

"So."

Bryan shrugs. He's still stupid with arousal and love and _want_ , and Nate is _cockblocking_ him. "What now, LT?"

Nate looks at him like he's stupid. "Now, Tim, we do a little recon on this."

"What the actual fuck, Nate," says Bryan in disbelief. 

It makes Nate smile, at least. "That's right," Nate says smugly. "Now we're going to braid each other's hair and talk about our feelings."

It's fucked up that something like Nate's teasing smile makes Bryan hard as fucking stone, but there it is. 

**

They don't get another moment to themselves for a long time-- long enough that Bryan almost convinces himself that it was some dream, a mirage caused by endless days of hunger and exhaustion.

They drive through shitty town after shitty town, and Bryan comes _this close_ to knocking the fuck out of every single shitty fucking human that cuts in line in front of the kids. 

Bryan wraps bandages around blistering burns, wipes tears from muddy faces. He cradles the head of the too-skinny boy in his arms and thinks about how many adult male bones he can shatter without actually taking a life. 

"There was nothing we could do," Nate says later, in the next shitty town. "I know it's fucking bullshit, Tim, but this is beyond us. It just isn't our battle to fight."

Bryan walks away from Nate without answering. 

It's unfair and childish, but Nate is the last person Bryan wants to lose his temper with, a temper that's already a frayed string threatening to snap. It's not Nate's fault, but with the stench of open sewers and infected stove-burns in his nostrils, and the crying of innocent children in his ears, Bryan can't help but want to shoot the messenger.

Bryan offers himself up for watch more often and gets too little sleep and clenches the butt of his rifle so hard he blisters all over again. Bryan closes his eyes to the refugees, the battered and the dying and the hopeless, and diagnoses too many children with inevitable death. Bryan gives out his ration of water and food until he's told to stop, then ignores the command and goes hungry for days.

Bryan avoids Nate. He can't avoid the words that appear on his wrist ( _ **im sorry. talk to me.**_ ), but he ignores them the best he can. Nate, when Bryan can bring himself to look at him, looks confused and hurt and tired.

They drive through the last shitty town and dig in at the military complex at Diwaniyah and then, just like that, their part in the war is over.

**

Bryan doesn't say goodbye. Instead, he shakes Nate's hand and he shakes Gunny's hand and then Bryan turns away, shouldering his pack, walks away from the half-formed words on Nate's lips.

When Bryan's out of sight, he uncaps his pen with shaking fingers and scrawls on his wrist. 

_This isn't goodbye._

**

Bryan watches the sun set over the desert for the last time, through the dirty glass windows at the airport. The low hanging clouds glow red and gold like dying embers, and nobody is there to sit and watch it with him.

He wants to be okay with that, tells himself it's better this way. 

He isn't.

**

Bryan doesn't call ahead, just rings the doorbell in his unwashed fatigues, face dark with two-day stubble. 

Mother opens the door, sees him, then turns her head away, hiding from him. Bryan still sees the glimmer of tears, catches the way her face crumples. 

Bryan is suddenly a little boy again, face covered in marker. He's a boy with a bandaid on his face at the county fair; a bewildered teen in a warmly lit kitchen. He is Bobby and he is Rob and he is Tim. He is home.

He says quietly: "Hello, Mother."

Tears are streaming down Mother's face when she turns back to him and takes Bryan's hand, the left one, the one covered with Nate's handwriting, and presses her lips to it. 

Bryan doesn't break until she whispers, "My boy, my beautiful boy," and steps forward to fit into his arms. Bryan wraps himself around her small, frail body and then he lets go, cries silently into her graying hair- for Muwaffaqiyah, for shepherd boys, for injustice, for Nate. For her.

**

Dinner is pork chops with spring greens, brownies for dessert. The pork is chewy and overcooked but Bryan still eats it too fast and helps himself to seconds. Mother tells him the latest gossip, a cousin getting married, her new job as a secretary in a local law firm. 

Bryan lets her talk, and she lets him sit and listen and doesn't comment on the weight Bryan's lost or the way he drifts in and out of the one-sided conversation, half of him still stuck in the desert surrounded by death. 

His aunt and uncle are on a road trip, celebrating his uncle's retirement. Mother is happy in her new life. She doesn't mention her ex-husband. Bryan nods and smiles and watches the way her eyes shine with tears and love and joy. 

She _does_ pause halfway through a story about her neighbor, once, and gently asks, "Are you okay, Tim?"

Bryan knows what she's trying to ask. He reaches out to squeeze her hand. 

"Not right now, but I'm gonna be," Bryan tells her. "I'm gonna be okay."

**

The cotton sheets of the guest bedroom bed are smooth and cool against his body, and there's a bouquet of wild flowers on the bedside table. Bryan looks at scrubbed-pink skin of his arm, where Nate's last message remains.

( _ **I finally found you, now don't let me fucking lose you.**_ )

Bryan hesitates, then grabs a pen off the bedside table, takes a deep breath, and writes down one set of coordinates and a date.

He falls asleep with the light on.

**

Bubby's is exactly the same.

Bryan doesn't know why he expected it to be different, as if the changes in himself would somehow be echoed in the greasy menus and exposed brick. 

The waitress is too friendly and fiddles with her name tag. Cindy. She refills his coffee without asking and slips a number in with his packets of Sweet 'n' Low. Bryan slips the number into his pocket and drinks his coffee black.

"I hear they make a mean chicken pot pie here."

Bryan takes another sip of coffee. It tastes nothing like November Juliet shit-in-a-tin-cup, but that doesn't mean it's good. His blood buzzes under his skin from their shared connection flaring up in a proximity alert. 

Nate sits without invitation, takes off his jacket. Nate doesn't back down from Bryan's gaze, but returns it, solid and steady.

"How've you been, Tim?"

Bryan considers the question. "Regaining my sanity, sir."

Nate sighs, signals for Cindy and her coffee pot. "You haven't returned my calls. Or... or, my notes." Nate fiddles with his left sleeve; Bryan can see the edges of the half-hidden words underneath it, a mirror image of his own arm. "I'm guessing I know why, so that doesn't make you wanting to meet here two days before check-in make any more sense."

Nate looks well, like someone is forcing him to eat and sleep properly. His hair curls over his forehead, longer than regulation. He'll have to buzz it off before they check back into base.

Nate's smile is more hesitant than his stare.

Bryan has thought about what to say. He'd decided direct would be best, but here, pinned by the green-grey stare of the man he loves, he's suddenly acting like the world's biggest pussy. 

"I'm thinking of leaving the Corps," Bryan says finally.

Nate doesn't even blink. "So am I."

They stare at each other until Cindy arrives with Nate's coffee. Nate stirs in two sugars and pushes aside the milk.

"When?" Bryan asks. He tries to resist the urge to lean into Nate's personal space, and almost manages it, except for a finger that twitches towards Nate. _Fucking Judas Iscariot motherfucker,_ he'd cut it off in a heartbeat if it did it again.

"July," says Nate. His gaze drifts down to Bryan's hand. "I was going to tell you anyway."

"Why?"

Nate's smiles gains a bitter edge. "I realized that I don't want to be responsible for a Marine's death, just because I went against my gut instinct and obeyed a command. I had enough of that in Iraq."

"You didn't get anyone killed, Nate," Bryan points out.

"That was sheer fucking luck, Tim, and you know it. We all knew it," Nate says, the ever-present tiredness creeping back into his voice. "Was that all you wanted to say, Tim? That's what you called me here for?"

(Bryan wants to tell Nate that he loves him with all of his heart. That he'd loved him before they even knew they were linked and that he'd loved him even though he'd been angry with him. That he isn't the same man that stepped door foot on Kuwaiti soil in February, but then neither is Nate, and he knows this because they changed together. For better or for worse.)

(Bryan wants to tell Nate that Nate is most of the reason Bryan didn't lose his fucking mind over there.)

Bryan says: "Yeah. I guess."

Nate chews his lip and doesn't look at him and drains his coffee and leaves.

**

Nate's paddle party is riotous in the way only a backyard full of Recon Marines can make it. Ray gets drunk on Jell-O shots and Poke's tequila and sloppily kisses Walt in front of God and country and platoon. Everyone laughs it off like it's a joke.

Bryan, leaning against the porch railing, sees the way Walt ruffles Ray's hair- his smile loaded with emotion- and feels satisfied.

Bryan tries not to look too hard or too long at Nate, and almost gets away with it.

The night wears on, and then turns into early morning. Nate corners Bryan while he's waiting for the bathroom to free up. Christenson is inside puking his guts out, with Stafford there for moral support.

Everyone else has either passed out or gone home. Nate's nose is red and there's spilt whiskey on his shirt, but his eyes are earnest and mostly sober. 

Nate says nothing at first, just places a hand over Bryan's heart; the material of Bryan's t-shirt soaks up the warmth, spreads it through his body. 

Then Nate says, simply: "Tim." 

(Reverently, like something sacrosanct.) 

Nate removes his hand and lowers it to Bryan's left wrist, grasps it gently, like it'll break if too much force is applied.

"LT," replies Bryan, brain fuzzy. He wishes he'd stopped at the 8th shot of tequila. 

Nate bites his lip, and Bryan's cock reacts at the sight. _Jesus_. 

"I...fuck," Nate groans, and then he buries his face in Bryan's shoulder and suddenly Bryan is a bomb ticking down to zero in a garden, he is rifle fire from an open-top Humvee, he is alive and Nate is here and electric and warm against his neck, and Bryan strokes a hand up Nate's spine, under Nate's shirt, just because he can. 

Nate murmurs words against Bryan's collarbone, words like _I've missed you,_ and _you stubborn fucking angry bastard_ , and Bryan doesn't know who kisses who first but then Nate's moaning those words into Bryan's mouth and it's all about to get way too R-Rated for an open hallway. 

Bryan is _this close_ to picking Nate up and just fucking carrying him into the nearest room. Now that he feels Nate's hands on his body again, feels the fire of their connection burn bright again, Bryan never wants to be separated from Nate again.

Bryan really is an actual idiot.

He can't do anything but dumbly follow when Nate tugs his wrist and leads him into the privacy of a nearby bedroom, like Nate could read Bryan's mind. 

Nate pulls Bryan's shirt roughly over his head.

"This is really not the place to be doing this," Nate whispers against Bryan's mouth, ever the voice of reason. Nate kisses him, hard and dirty, then pulls back again and continues: "But I couldn't fucking stand looking at you out there, after so long not speaking, with your fucking mouth wrapped around that beer and not talking to me-"

"You're _leaving_ ," Bryan snarls, but he's too fucking aroused to be truly angry. 

"You made me drive two hours to see you!" Nate snarls back, and dips in for another kiss, this one rougher and tinged with frustration. "I had to pay four bucks for a burnt cup of coffee and you just sat there and didn't look at me and _didn't say anything_!"

Bryan tears at Nate's stupid button-down, ignores the button shrapnel stinging his forehead. "I couldn't do it," Bryan says.

Nate is panting now, and Bryan undoes Nate's pants to release his straining cock. _Jesus_. Bryan slides a hand down it, then drags up, slow, and Nate groans. The sound makes Bryan's own cock twitch in his pants.

"You're a fucking dick," Nate bitches, and without warning shoves him backwards onto the bed. Nate yanks Bryan's shorts and underwear off with desperate movements, and then Nate stops talking so that he can fucking swallow Bryan's cock, all the way down to the hilt.

"Nate, fucking, holy _shit_ ," Bryan grits out, struggling to breathe. "Where the fuck did you learn how to-- God, you feel, fuck." 

Bryan cannot compute, he can't move, paralyzed by Nate's throat closing around the head of his cock. Bryan pushes up onto his elbows and watches Nate's lips stretch around him, fuck, fuck, and Nate has a hand cupping Bryan's balls as he strokes Bryan's cock into his mouth, messy and fast and desperate. Bryan tries to remember to breathe, but it's hard when Nate swivels his head and flicks his tongue and makes Bryan feel like he's going to maybe pass out, and Bryan groans too loud and says Nate's name like an unspoken _I love you,_ over and over.

When Nate pulls off, Nate stumbles a bit, breathing hard. There's a smear of moisture on his cheek. He walks unsteadily to the table next to the bed, takes out a condom. Bryan really isn't going to last much longer. 

"I need you to fuck me," Nate says firmly. 

The world spins. 

Bryan says, "Fuck, you can't, I can't--"

"That is a fucking order, Corpsman," Nate snaps and then Bryan can't say anything more because, oh God, because Nate pushes him further up the bed and crouches over him, one hand disappearing behind Nate's back. Bryan reaches down to stroke the long, hot line of Nate's cock and bites into his mouth as Nate's body begins to move, subtly, a back-and-forth above Bryan's body. Oh, shit.

"Are you fucking yourself on your fingers for me, LT?" Bryan whispers, staring straight into Nate's eyes, the feeling of Nate's cock between his fingers like a rush of energy up his arm. 

Nate doesn't say anything, just sighs and closes his eyes. He rests his forehead against Bryan's, skin hot and already sweaty. 

Then Nate says, "Put the condom on so you can fuck me, right now," and Bryan stops breathing. 

Nate makes it sound like an order as well, and Bryan doesn't have a fucking kink or anything but he sure as hell responds to Nate when he barks in his officer voice in this context, breath hot against Bryan's face and his cock heavy and leaking in Bryan's hand.

"You know, I thought about this a lot," Nate says almost conversationally, still fucking fingerfucking himself above Bryan. "Back in theater. You weren't speaking to me, so I spent a lot of time in my Victor just thinking about how this would go down."

"Yeah?" Bryan grits out. 

"Yeah," Nate grins lazily, eyes hooded. "Some of my fantasies went kinda like this."

Bryan gets the condom on seconds before Nate lifts himself up and sinks down, slick and hot, onto Bryan's cock.

"Doc, fuck, Tim, oh, _shit,_ " Nate gasps. 

They still for a moment, frozen in the feeling of their connection flaring up. Bryan knows Nate feels it too, it's so strong it's almost tangible, and Bryan has had a lot to drink but he doesn't think he's imagining the sound of Nate's heartbeat, suddenly loud and beating in time with his own.

Nate shudders, strokes his hands wonderingly over Bryan's chest, then rests his ear against Bryan's chest. Over Bryan's heart.

Nate is still unbearably hot and clenching on Bryan's dick and after a second, impossibly, the connection grows _stronger_. Bryan suddenly feels every fucking inch of his dick pulsing hard and thick inside Nate, except it's from _Nate's_ side.

"Do you feel--" Bryan chokes out.

" _Yeah,_ " Nate groans.

Bryan's mind is suddenly flooded with images and fleeting thoughts as Nate begins to rock, slowly. Thoughts that have a particular signature, similar to the tingle on his arm: the heat of their connection. The distinct smell and feel and taste of _Nate_.

They don't need to speak. Nate's rocking slowly grows more and more insistent, urgent, punctuated by little gasps and moans. Bryan's hands instinctively shoot up to grab at Nate's too-hot hips so he can thrust up into him, reveling in the white-hot grip of Nate's body around his cock.

His world and Nate's world tunnel together into this moment, just here, Nate's face lined with pleasure and his head bowed into Bryan's shoulder, Bryan sucking a mark into his neck, their bodies joined at the center, their minds melding. Somehow sharing every movement.

Bryan feels what Nate feels as Bryan fucks up into Nate, catches brief flashes of thought like _need_ and _Tim_ and _love_. Bryan can't fucking breathe, everything building and cresting and fuck, Nate is here, in his arms, and Nate is sweaty and alive and glorious.

Bryan reaches up and grabs Nate by the back of the neck, kisses Nate's mouth, his chin, his shoulder. Bryan looks into green eyes blown black with arousal and thinks, clearly: I fucking love you, Nate Fick. 

Nate shudders and lets out a strangled moan. He comes messy and perfect between them, and collapses, shaking, onto Bryan's chest. Bryan's vision blurs and his fingers dig too hard into Nate's hips, and then Bryan is lost.

They lie like that after they come back down, just listening to each other's heartbeats.

"Oh," says Nate.

"Oh," Bryan agrees. 

He strokes a finger down the length of Nate's arm and smiles when Nate full-body shudders.

"I meant it," Nate says softly into his chest. "I don't know if you, well, if you heard anything I--"

"I heard it," Bryan interrupts. 

Nate opens his eyes, looks up at him. "I heard you too."

Bryan smirks down into Nate's open face. "Good. Least I don't have to fucking say it out loud now."

Nate punches him. Bryan carries the bruise above his heart around for a week. 

**

Bubby's is exactly the same. 

It's been two years, and Bryan definitely thought there would be some changes this time, but there are exactly zero. Same coffee, same menus, same grease. His waitress is Mindy, not Cindy. That's it. That's the only difference.

A pair of sensible tennis shoes stop in front of his table. Bryan thinks about adding milk to his coffee to cover the taste.

"I hear they make a mean chicken pot pie here," says Nate, taking off his jacket.

Bryan snorts into his coffee. "Just fucking sit down, asshole."

Nate sits and reaches out to stroke at his wrist, his idea of their own secret handshake. Bryan doesn't hate it, especially because Nate seems to get such a kick out of it.

Nate presses into Bryan's side comfortably. He waves for Mindy and her coffee pot, and then looks at Bryan with a grin.

"What's that for?" Bryan asks with a raised eyebrow.

Nate shrugs, still grinning. "Fuck off," he says amiably. "Nothing. I don't know. I want to kiss you. Three weeks is too long."

Bryan wants to kiss Nate, too. He settles for running his fingers over the skin of Nate's arm. "We'll make do," Bryan reminds him. "We always do."

When Mindy brings the coffee, she takes one look at them and melts. "Oh my God, you guys are so adorable," she says, nearly dropping Nate's coffee. "You look so happy together."

Nate catches his eyes and smirks. Bryan thinks about it for a second.

"Yeah," Bryan says. "Yeah, we are."

She walks away with a smile. Bryan watches Nate make a horrible face over the coffee, as usual, and then pull out a thick book and his glasses, as usual. 

Bryan thinks back to what Mother had asked him, his first day back home. _Are you okay, Tim?_

He looks at Nate, who looks up briefly to smile warmly at him over his glasses. Bryan thinks about what he'd answered then. _No, but I'm gonna be._

Yeah. Bryan's gonna be just fine. 

**

_here is the deepest secret nobody knows_

_(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud_  


_and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows_  
_higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)_  


_and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart_  


_i carry your heart_  
_(i carry it in my heart)_


End file.
